The Hive flak perk is cool but hard to use manually and seems to be made quickly obsolete when a good emp weapon is acquired. Once I get a strong emp I never use it.

My idea is to make it auto fire with a skill level that relates to your crew skill and perhaps the command level

I always felt missle defense weapons should automatically activate. I've only equipped one (after knowing what it did) but, as soon as I discovered it didn't automatically take care of the problem for me, immediately removed it and have never equipped another one since.

It should automatically target missiles, by proximity. You should have to manually fire them (press the button) but the nothing else should be required of you to get them to do their jobs.

But then I also suggested turning them into a psuedo flak-field defense, rather than a discrete-targeting weapon. You'd press the button and it would create an arc of small explosions (at a discrete distance) in the direction of your cursor. Drones and Missiles passing through this arc then take heavy damage or are destroyed. Flak batteries would then exist as on/off state weapons. While on, they continuously drain power (like cloaks), and then they have a moderate cooldown before they can be re-engaged again.

This arc of fire, while active, then remains firing in that direction relative to your ship till it gets switched off. This allows you to stack multiple flak batteries for larger coverage areas. For reference, I'm thinking +/- 45 degrees per arc, for a total of 4 required for full 360 degree coverage (4 medium component slots is a hell of a price to pay for an impenetrable missile defense...for as long as you've got power to sustain it).

I don't think that enemy ships should be able to fly through them with impunity, but the damage these flak batteries do to them should be rather minimal (1/4th or less of the normal damage).

It should automatically target missiles, by proximity. You should have to manually fire them (press the button) but the nothing else should be required of you to get them to do their jobs.

But then I also suggested turning them into a psuedo flak-field defense, rather than a discrete-targeting weapon. You'd press the button and it would create an arc of small explosions (at a discrete distance) in the direction of your cursor. Drones and Missiles passing through this arc then take heavy damage or are destroyed. Flak batteries would then exist as on/off state weapons. While on, they continuously drain power (like cloaks), and then they have a moderate cooldown before they can be re-engaged again.

This arc of fire, while active, then remains firing in that direction relative to your ship till it gets switched off. This allows you to stack multiple flak batteries for larger coverage areas. For reference, I'm thinking +/- 45 degrees per arc, for a total of 4 required for full 360 degree coverage (4 medium component slots is a hell of a price to pay for an impenetrable missile defense...for as long as you've got power to sustain it).

I don't think that enemy ships should be able to fly through them with impunity, but the damage these flak batteries do to them should be rather minimal (1/4th or less of the normal damage).

Anyways, that was my idea for them.

That sounds like a good idea if the batteries could be switched on and off with a keyboard command instead of the mouse.

Flak certainly needs some love. I like of the flak arcs as long as it can be aimed ahead of time. The vast majority of the time the missiles I am concerned with are behind my ship. Having to aim on each individual missile and fire multiple shots to take each one out, all while waiting for too long of a cooldown, makes flak a chore and unpleasant to use.

Flak certainly needs some love. I like of the flak arcs as long as it can be aimed ahead of time. The vast majority of the time the missiles I am concerned with are behind my ship. Having to aim on each individual missile and fire multiple shots to take each one out, all while waiting for too long of a cooldown, makes flak a chore and unpleasant to use.

I'd love to see flak earn a spot on my ships.

I think you are using flak well below your level (or rather, the enemy level) if it takes you more than 1 shot to kill a missile.
Also as mentioned before you don't actually have to aim at a missile yourself, it already does that for you.

That said, flak definitely could use some love.
I like the idea of setting it to auto-repeat / have it work more like a cloak.
I don't really like the flak-field defense suggestion, that would make it OP and require its energy usage to be increased by a lot (on par to what your main weapon would use at the least).

As i've mentioned elsewhere i do like the idea of flak being useful against mines (or alternatively to have a minesweeper introduced).

Perhaps I'm using a different flak component then you. I have to stop aiming at my current target and start targetting the missiles to use flak. Once I target one I can just hit the hotkey, but if I go back to targetting an enemy I lose my ability to use flak again.

I can't confirm what level the flak items I used were right now. I do know that it took two shots per missile.

Hm, i think the problem might be related to how the game works regarding direct targetting and vicinity targetting.

If you direct target a ship and try to use the flak, it wouldn't work because it tries to apply it on the target you are directly targetting.
If you used vicinity targetting it would work because it would look for the nearest missile.

Vicinity targetting btw = the game automatically uses the weapon on the nearest applicable opponent from the cursor if it doesn't directly point at one.

I suppose weapons should default back to vicinity targetting if the direct target isnt applicable, or alternatively have the flak only function through vicinity targetting and completely ignore the direct target.

If it takes you two shots you arent using flak on par with your opponents.
That said i suppose there is no harm in having the dam from flak increased a bit so that you dont have to get a new flak cannon so frequently.